No.

The deaths of more than 25,000 children in the Somalian famine and brutality cannot but provoke intense sadness.

The ongoing enslavement of 27 million people worldwide, many of them women and girls in sexual bondage, cannot but provoke intense sadness.

The bloody repression in Syria cannot but provoke intense sadness.

(They would also provoke intense anger, but Andrew’s statement isn’t limited to sadness).

Cue George Will, from 1997, on the reactions to Princess Diana’s death:

When it is the celebrity of the deceased that triggers behavior that gets identified as “grief” and “suffering,” what words remain to describe what occurs in, say, a pediatric oncology ward?

Enough.  She had a great voice.  She sang some really silly songs.  She destroyed herself, with an assist entertainment industry culture.  That is all.

This is . . . nonsense.

Now, it’s true that I didn’t much give a damn when Diana Spencer was killed in a car crash. And, while I thought the passing of Whitney Houston not only noteworthy but “A tragic waste,” I can’t claim to have been overly broken up about it. It’s sad when young people die but it happens all the time and I don’t get particularly upset about it unless there’s some personal connection.

But people feel sometimes feel intense connections to celebrities. We can feel that we “know” athletes, entertainers, politicians, and others that we’ve followed, rooted for, or whatnot over a period of time and feel a genuine sense of loss when they’re gone.

In his tribute to Houston, Andrew writes, “ don’t know what to say except that I came out to her in her heyday. ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ was my disco favorite back when I went out every weekend in my 20s, and it felt weirdly liberational.” That’s a meaningful connection at a particularly formative period in his life–particularly, one imagines, for a young gay man in an era where being openly gay made him a pariah in his own conservative, Catholic circles. Surely, he’s entitled to “intense sadness” over her death at a young age. (Indeed, if their Wikipedia entries are correct, Houston was born but a day before him.)

This one is may favorite:

I’m really not sure what to say.

Whitney Houston, once one of the biggest stars in American popular culture, has died.

AP (“Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dies“):

Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music’s queen until her majestic voice and regal image were ravaged by drug use, erratic behavior and a tumultuous marriage to singer Bobby Brown, has died. She was 48.

Houston’s publicist, Kristen Foster, said Saturday that the singer had died, but the cause and the location of her death were unknown.

News of Houston’s death came on the eve of music’s biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It’s a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to cast a heavy pall on Sunday’s ceremony. Houston’s longtime mentor Clive Davis was to hold his annual concert and dinner Saturday; it was unclear if it was going to go forward.

“I am absolutely heartbroken at the news of Whitney’s passing,” music producer Quincy Jones said in a written statement. “I always regretted not having had the opportunity to work with her. She was a true original and a talent beyond compare. I will miss her terribly.”

At her peak, Houston was the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world’s best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Her success carried her beyond music to movies, where she starred in hits like “The Bodyguard” and “Waiting to Exhale.”

She had the perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

She influenced a generation of younger singers, from Christina Aguilera to Mariah Carey, who when she first came out sounded so much like Houston that many thought it was Houston.

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

A tragic waste.

The commercial from last night’s Super Bowl that’s getting the most attention in the political world is the one that ran just minutes after the Giants and Patriots and returned to their locker rooms for halftime, and almost from the instant it started running it became subject of political debate:

A Chrysler commercial that aired during Sunday night’s Super Bowl has struck a chord in the political world. Narrated by actor Clint Eastwood, the ad drew a comparison between the championship football game and the state of the U.S. economy.

“It’s halftime. Both teams are in their locker rooms discussing what they can do to win this game in the second half. It’s halftime in America, too.” Eastwood says. “People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re gonna do to make a comeback.”

Pointing to improvement in the auto industry as a positive sign, the “Dirty Harry” star goes on, “Detroit’s showing us it can be done. …This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.”

Though the commercial didn’t mention any politicians by name, Twitter quickly lit up with speculation: Was Eastwood giving props to President Obama for bailing out the auto industry?  And was the ad a veiled endorsement of his re-election?

David Axelrod, a top campaign adviser to Obama, seemed quick to interpret it that way, calling the ad a “powerful spot.”

But Chrysler denies that the ad is pro-Obama. According to a company spokesman, CEO Sergio Marchionne told Detroit WJR’s Paul W. Smith on Monday: “The message is sufficiently universal and neutral that it should be appealing to everybody in this country and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t get utilized as political fodder in a debate.”

If you haven’t seen the ad yet, and I can’t imagine there are many people who haven’t at this point, here it is:

Personally, politics was the last thing that entered my mind when the ad was running. Even before the subject of the ad was clear, there was no mistaking Eastwood’s distinctive voice. The message itself struck me as something that was so sufficiently general that anyone would agree with it regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum. However, as I noted this weekend, we now live in a culture where everything eventually becomes politicized, and it didn’t take long for Twitter to fill up with commentary on the ad’s supposed political message. From the left, of course, the reaction was fairly similar to what Axelrod said in his Tweet, that the commercial was somehow an endorsement of the President even though neither politics nor the President are every even mentioned in the had. People on the right saw the same thing, except of course they complained about government money being used for that kind of message and Eastwood taking money to convey it.

That complaint is being picked up by pundits on the right today. Karl Rove said on Fox News this morning that he found the ad offensive;

“I was, frankly, offended by it,” said Karl Rove on Fox News Monday. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

One columnist from the Atlanta-Journal Constitution agrees:

But the halftime Chrysler commercial starring Clint Eastwood, describing America as being in its own “halftime,” was just overtly politicized. After all, what else could “halftime” have meant, in the year 2012, than halfway through the eight years Barack Obama would be president if re-elected this fall? I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a prediction that the country will break up circa 2248 A.D.

Chrysler of course has a right to political speech. But it would be nice if the company wouldn’t be so brazen about its leanings while still owing the entire country — left, right and center — billions of dollars.

Now it’s perfectly fine to have opposed the auto industry bailouts. I did myself and Eastwood himself said he opposed the bailouts in a 2010 interview. It would have preferable if President Bush had listened to the will of Congress and the American people in December 2008 instead of giving billions of dollars of TARP money to General Motors and Chrysler. Had he done that then, the companies would have been forced into the only place they ever actually belonged, and the place where they ultimately ended up, United States Bankruptcy Court. The financial situation that they were in at the time were exactly what Chapter 11 was created for, and it would have been far better if they’d gone through the process sooner and before billions of dollars of taxpayer money were given away to protect the position of politically favored businesses and labor unions. That’s water under the bridge at this point, though, and it seems slightly absurd to me to argue that G.M. and Chrysler shouldn’t be advertising to promote their products. Presidents Bush and Obama made the foolish decision to engage in these bailouts, wouldn’t it be nice if these companies did what they needed to pay us back (not that I’m expecting most of that money to ever be paid back)?

But that’s not even what this argument is about, I think. Isn’t it possible to look at this commercial as doing something than other than confirming the political views of the viewer? Frankly, I just thought it was a well done commercial with a great veteran actor, and a welcome sight in a year when most of the Super Bowl ads frankly stunk. You don’t have to view everything through a political prisim and, to some degree, it strikes me that it’s unhealthy to do so.

Clint Eastwood made a cool commercial. Can’t we just leave it at? Because a political argument over a car commercial strikes me as kind of stupid.

Update: For what it’s worth, Dirty Harry himself has spoken and denies any political motive behind the ad:

Following the fall out over the controversial Chrysler Super Bowl halftime ad, Clint Eastwood spoke exclusively with O’Reilly Factor producer Ron Mitchell…

“I just want to say that the spin stops with you guys, and there is no spin in that ad. On this I am certain.

l am certainly not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama. It was meant to be a message about just about job growth and the spirit of America. I think all politicians will agree with it. I thought the spirit was OK.

I am not supporting any politician at this time.

Chrysler to their credit didn’t even have cars in the ad.

Anything they gave me for it went for charity.

If any Obama or any other politician wants to run with the spirit of that ad, go for it.”

So, there you have it.

In today’s New York Times, Gail Collins opens a column about the Susan G. Komen Foundation/Planned Parenthood controversy that arose this week by observing the extent to which nearly everything in our society ends up becoming politicized:

This week we had a huge political fight about breast cancer. Clearly, we have now hit the point where there’s nothing that can’t be divided into red-state-blue-state.

Nothing. The other day I saw a blog called “I Dig My Garden” that had a forum on whether Republicans could truly love gardening. And there was a little dust-up in Albany over politicization of a local pet blog, which had featured a discussion on Mitt Romney’s driving to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car.

But breast cancer would seem like the last thing to go. Everybody hates cancer and everybody likes breasts — infants, adults, women, men. Really, it’s America’s most popular body part.

Indeed, part of the reason for the overwhelming success that the Komen Foundation has had over the years is the extent to which it has been able extend its pink ribbon campaign into so many different parts of our culture. You see pink-adorned packages in grocery stores, for example, and both the NFL and Major League Baseball have taken up the cause at various points during their respective seasons. Some on the outside have criticized Komen in this regard because of its aggressiveness in defending its trademarks, not to mention the fact that it often seems that “Breast Cancer Awareness” crowds out attention that should also be paid to other diseases, some of which are even deadlier. Nonetheless, up until this week, it was hard to think of anything more non-political than being against breast cancer and in favor of the most well-known foundation dedicated to fighting it.

That’s all over now, of course. I don’t know how long Komen has been giving grant money for early breast cancer screenings to Planned Parenthood, but I can honestly say that until this week I neither had any idea that they were doing it, nor would I have particularly cared had I found out about it. For reasons that are worthy of a post all its own, though, Planned Parenthood has become a political lightning rod in recent years thanks largely to the fact that a relatively small portion of what it does, by most reasonable estimates no more than 10% per year, includes abortion services (not the 90% that Jon Kyl once claimed and then deleted from the Senate record after his staff emphasized that what he said was “not intended to be a factual statement.”) Its understandable why people who feel strongly about that issue would have strong opinions about Planned Parenthood, but when one takes into account the fact that the organization also provides services to poor women, including providing contraceptives and screenings for breast and cervical cancer, the notion that the entire organization and anyone who donates to it must be condemned strikes me as completely nonsensical. (Note that I am not addressing here the issues surrounding Federal funding of Planned Parenthood, which is an entirely separate issue in my mind, although it is worth noting that polling indicates that the public opposes the Republican position on that issue).

In a rational world, it strikes me that one should be able to make a distinction between those aspects of an organizations practices one approves, and those one does not. In Komen’s case, they had obviously made the determination that helping to fund Planned Parenthood’s early breast cancer screenings was compatible with the mission of the Foundation which they have described in the past as including both funding research to find a cure for breast cancer and increasing the survival rate for those diagnosed through better early detection methods. As with any form of cancer, the early breast cancer is detected, the more likely it is that someone will survive. Viewed from that perspective alone, the decision to provide grants to organizations like Planned Parenthood makes perfect sense.

Of course, once an issue that people feel strongly about gets involved, the possibility for rational discussion goes out the window. When Komen decided to cut off the grant to Planned Parenthood, pro-choice groups reacted negatively and rallied around Planned Parenthood. Now that they’ve changed their mind, it appears that pro-life groups are reacting the same way. For the most part, this is because it appeared from the beginning that Komen’s decision was based in politics, not in any objective evaluation of whether or not the grant was in the Foundations interest. So, whether it intended to or not, the Komen Foundation has now become known as an organization that took sides in the culture war, then switched sides, under circumstances that look perfectly amateurish from a Public Relations point of view.

Why these seemingly simple health issues should become so politicized is the question Collins asks.

But of course, it’s not just health issues that seem to have become politicized. Just this past fall, while he was leading the Denver Broncos to a series of seemingly improbable come from behind victories, a young Quarterback named Tim Tebow found himself the latest battleground in the culture wars. Tebow’s successes were touted by many Christians as proof of the power of his faith, and his losses were often cheered by obnoxious atheists like Bill Maher.  Tebow was even being courted by Republican candidates for President for an endorsement. To his credit, Tebow didn’t encourage any of this nonsense and remained far more sanguine about his success than the people who had latched on to him. Nonetheless, just like women’s health for a time something as seemingly non-political as professional football quite literally became a football itself in the culture wars.

Those are just two examples of how seemingly innocent subject have become politicized for no rational reason. Some of it, no doubt, is based on cultural differences between different parts of the country, but that alone doesn’t explain it all.  Perhaps it’s a reflection of how polarizing the Red State/Blue State divide has become in recent years that even the things that should unite us end up dividing us. Perhaps it’s the pervasiveness of the cable news/talk radio culture.  Whatever the cause, it doesn’t strike me as very healthy that we have, as Collins notes, reached a point where quite literally anything can become a battleground between Team Blue State and Team Red State.

One wonders why any Republican politician would want to be associated with this image.

Stephen Colbert’s longstanding bit about his Super PAC has been amusing. But it has little to do with Citizens United or, indeed, anything new in campaign finance law.

Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick (“Colbert v. the Court: Why, in the battle over Citizens United, the Supreme Court never had a chance“) is the latest to swoon over the shtick.

DC is attractive to the movie industry only because it has a couple of famous buildings. A new move will make it nearly impossible to film said buildings.

WaPo (“Filming movies in Washington just got harder“):

John Latenser doesn’t want to lose his dome.

The Bethesda-based location scout was standing last week on one of Hollywood’s favorite spots in the District, a sliver of pavement at the edge of the reflecting pool with the U.S. Capitol looming just so over his shoulder — as it has loomed over Sean Penn, Aaron Eckhart and various Transformer robots.

“This is one of the great money shots in D.C.,” says Latenser, who was here scouting angles for “Veep,” a new HBO series that hopes to add Julia Louis-Dreyfus to the list of those filmed at this spot off First Street NW.

Directors love this angle not so much for aesthetic reasons as legal ones. It is as close as they are allowed to get to the Capitol itself. So Latenser and others in the D.C. film community were horrified to learn last month that Congress had quietly lifted control over this easternmost patch of the Mall from the U.S. Park Service, which is known as a film-friendly agency, and given it to the Capitol Police, which is not.

“The answer from the Capitol is always absolutely no,” Peggy Pridemore, another D.C. location manager, whose local credits include “Wedding Crashers,” “Night at the Museum 2″ and “Forrest Gump.” “My entire industry was afraid we are going to lose that special spot to film the Capitol building.”

The prospect of giving up their beauty shot of the D.C. icon comes at a bad time for the city’s film industry. Even as Washington story lines are enjoying a boom in movies and television, the nation’s capital is losing more and more of the actual location work to other cities.

No matter how much art directors crave Washington’s majestic vistas, they quickly run into twin deal-killers: Filming in the security-obsessed federal core has become a hair-pulling hassle, and the District government lacks the money to compete with sweetheart incentives from other locations.

Baltimore, in particular, is eating the District’s popcorn. Thanks to Maryland’s generous tax-deferral program for film projects and aggressive courting of producers, at least three recent Washington-set stories are using Charm City as a stand-in. They include “Veep”; “Game Change,” a coming Sarah Palin flick from HBO; and “House of Cards,” a political drama that will mark Netflix’s first foray into original programming.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Crystal Palmer, director of the District’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, of the spate of other locations doubling for the District. “We have a two-fold problem. The first question they ask is ‘Do you have an incentive program?’ The second is ‘Can I film inside the U.S. Capitol?’ We basically have to say no to both.’ ”

I get that has very serious security concerns. Then again, so does New York, which seems to manage. Of course, New York gets to manage its own affairs in its own interest.

Correction: I initially read the story as a transfer from the Park Police to the DC Metro police rather than the federal Capitol Police. The headline and lede have been changed accordingly.

Soul Train’s Don Cornelius has been shot to death. He was 75.

CNN (“Coroner: ‘Soul Train’ founder dead of gunshot wound“):

Don Cornelius, the founder of “Soul Train,” has been found dead in Los Angeles, Lt. Larry Dietz of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office said Wednesday.

He died of a gunshot wound at a house on Mulholland Drive, said Officer Tenesha Dodine.

Cornelius created a pilot for “Soul Train” using $400 of his own money, according to the website biography.com.

This is a breaking story and there are no details as to why or by whom Cornelius was shot. While “Soul Train” was never my cup of tea, it was an iconic show and Cornelius was a major figure in American popular culture.

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times (“‘Soul Train’ creator Don Cornelius dead in apparent suicide“) reports that the wounds were self-inflicted.

“Soul Train” creator Don Cornelius was found dead at his Sherman Oaks on home Wednesday morning.

Law enforcement sources said police arrived at Cornelius’ home around 4 a.m. He apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing.

The sources said there was no sign of foul play, but the Los Angeles Police Department was investigating.

Politico (“Stephen Colbert’s FEC report: Big money!“):

Between July 1 and Dec. 31, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow collected more than $825,400, ending the year with nearly $674,000 cash on hand, according to disclosures filed over night with the Federal Election Commission.

[...]

n an accompanying memo to the Federal Election Commission, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow Treasurer Shauna Polk noted that the super PAC raised had raised $1,023,121 as of Monday.

Then, Polk offered an unconventional statement. “Stephen Colbert, President of ABTT, has asked that I quote him as saying, ‘Yeah! How you like me now, F.E.C? I’m rolling seven digits deep! I got 99 problems but a non-connected independent-expenditure only committee ain’t one!’” Polk wrote, adding, “I would like it noted for the record that I advised Mr. Colbert against including that quote.”

Colbert has made forming a super PAC — then operating it, handing it over to fellow comic Jon Stewart, then stealing it back after flirting with a presidential run in South Carolina — a centerpiece of his nightly Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report.”

It’s been a rather amusing bit, highlighting the absurdity of the rules governing the process–rules which are now quite literally a joke. To the extent that he’s trying to demonstrate that Citizens United gives corporations too much influence on the process, though, it’s not at all clear he’s succeeding. It’s not as if his joke ads are having meaningful impact on the race, even though he’s spent a significant amount of money running them.

The Daily (“Paula’s big fat secret“):

Paula Deen — the queen of high-calorie, Southern cooking — is about to come clean and confess that she can’t eat her own dishes anymore because she has diabetes.

The Georgia-born chef — a Food Network star who has written five best-selling cookbooks — has been trying to keep her condition a secret, even after the National Enquirer reported in April that she has Type 2 diabetes, which is often associated with fatty foods and obesity.

Sources say Deen, 64, who never addressed the diabetes question, has worked out a multimillion-dollar deal to be the spokeswoman for a pharmaceutical company and endorse the drug she is taking.

Novartis, the drug company she is said to be working for, declined to respond to Flash’s questions, as did Deen’s agent and Deen herself.

“Paula Deen is going to have to reposition herself now that she has diabetes,” said one source. “She’s going to have to start cooking healthier recipes. She can’t keep pushing mac and cheese and deep-fried Twinkies when she is hawking a diabetes drug.”

Deen has faced withering criticism for the high amounts of fat, salt and sugar in her dishes. When Deen’s cookbook for kids, “Lunch-Box Set,” was published in 2009, Barbara Walters asked her, “You tell kids to have cheesecake for breakfast. You tell them to have chocolate cake and meatloaf for lunch. And french fries. Doesn’t it bother you that you’re adding to this?”

Last August, “No Reservations” host Anthony Bourdain called Deen “the worst, most dangerous person to America” and said she should “think twice before telling an already obese nation that it’s OK to eat food that is killing us.”

That’s a bit harsh. But, yeah, it’s one thing to indulge in the occasional treat and quite another to eat nothing but garbage. It’s a pretty sweet deal, though, to go from making millions helping contribute to the diabetes epidemic to making millions from hawking a treatment.

As I noted in my earlier post, Denver Broncos Quarterback Tim Tebow has become, in a very short period of time, some kind of weird symbol of the cultural wars. On the one side you’ve got secularists like Bill Maher who openly cheer when Tebow performs badly as if that by itself confirms their atheism. On the other side we have religious conservatives who seem to view every Tebow victory, or even the mere coincidence that his number of passing yards is similar to a particular Bible verse, to be proof of their own beliefs. Observing all of this from mostly the sidelines, I’ve found the entire thing to be more than a little ridiculous. The idea that God, if such a thing actually existed, would care one way or the other about the outcome of a sporting event has always struck me as profoundly silly and on a level with the ancient animistic religions that saw divine intervention every time there was thunder and lightening.

It is perhaps because he’s gotten caught up in this weird cultural/political war that Tebow has become such a focus of media attention, although the fact that he’s telegenic and winning football games in dramatic fashion probably has something to do with it too. In any case, whatever side you take in the culture wars, it’s worth noting that Tebow himself is far more sanguine about his success than either side in this weird debate that has swept across the country:

As he prepares for Saturday night’s NFL playoff game between Denver and New England, Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow told “The NFL Today” host James Brown that his parents taught him the perspective he brings to the sport:

“I think number one is, what my mom and dad preached to me when I was a little kid: Just because you may have athletic ability and you may be able to play a sport doesn’t make you any more special than anybody else,” Tebow said. “Doesn’t mean God loves you more than anybody else.

“We play a sport. It’s a game. At the end of the day, that’s all it is, is a game. It doesn’t make you any better or any worse than anybody else. So by winning a game, you’re no better. By losing a game, you’re no worse. I think by keeping that mentality, it really keeps things in perspective for me to treat everybody the same.”

“The guy is a wonderful young man,” Brown told Charlie Rose. “There is no phoniness in him at all. What you see is what you get. He’s been the same way, Charlie, from Pop Warner football. If you can win over a testosterone-laden locker room where there’s some crusty hard-nosed guys in there, bottom line is, he’s a winner.

“He does come to the NFL level, the highest form of football, without a polished skill set that’s associated with an elite level quarterback. But he’s overcome challenges each and every step of the way. And hey, if he’s learning at the NFL level and he’s got his team in the post-season, that’s a pretty good athlete in my book.”

“The NFL Today” host described the quarterback as self-effacing, who does not want to discuss his charity, such as helping young people with serious health problems. “The big thing with Tebow, he says, ‘I’m using football as a platform for bigger and better things,’ and who can argue with that?” said Brown.

By all accounts, Tebow is genuine in his beliefs and the same in person as he comes across in public, which is itself a rarity in professional sports. On some level, though, I think it’s unfair to him that he’s has been turned so quickly, by others, into something more than what he actually is, which is a football player. It doesn’t appear to me that it’s a role he ever asked for. Yes., he’s been public about his faith but that’s his right. The fact that his pre-game sideline prayer ritual has become an internet meme actually strikes me as a bit insulting to him given that it takes something that is important to him and trivializes it so that people can post pictures of themselves on the Internet doing something other than planking. It even became the subject of a bet between the Mayors of Denver and Pittsburgh before last weeks AFC Wild Card Game. The prayer ritual doesn’t mean that much to me, but mocking it in that manner strikes me as pretty dumb.

In other words, Tebow is being more mature and more level-headed about this than any of the people who have adopted him as either a cultural hero or enemy. Perhaps they could all take a clue from him and just enjoy the game. The Broncos are currently 13.5 point underdogs heading in to Foxboro, which isn’t surprising considering that Denver lost the last game against the Patriots by nearly 20 points. It’s going to take another stellar performance to pull off a win this weekend,  and personally I doubt Tebow will be able to do it. Whichever way it turns out, though, lets not pretend that it means anything. Other than deciding which team goes on to the AFC Championship Game, that is.

HuffPo “Cee Lo Green Changes ‘Imagine’ Lyrics To ‘All Religions,’ Fights Twitter Anger”

Cee Lo Green’s small change to the lyrics to John Lennon’s song “Imagine” is causing a very big uproar.

Charged with singing Lennon’s famous solo-era tune on NBC’s New Year’s Eve show shortly before the ball dropped in Times Square , Green changed the lyrics from “Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too” to “Nothing to kill or die for, And all religion’s true.”

The change didn’t go unnoticed, and to preempt criticism, he soon tweeted, “Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all.”

That did little to comfort angered Lennon fans, who lashed out over Twitter. Watch the performance below and then read the angry exchanges over Twitter.

This is followed by a HuffPo classic: a 21 page slideshow capturing Twitter quotes to drive up pageviews.

I find the notion expressed by many commenters that this is some horrendous insult to Lennon and his legacy absurd. His version has been preserved for the ages and been played countless times over the decades since it was released. Green has the artistic license to change is around a bit to put his spin on it.

While my sympathies are with Lennon on this one, Green’s alternate is interesting. On the one hand, it’s a sweet sentiment. On the other, it’s an absurdity: the major religions directly contradict one another on major doctrinal tenets; they can’t all be true.

At any rate, the video’s below. Green’s performance begins at the 3:56 mark.

To watch more, visit tag

It looks quite good. Despite being older and further removed from my comic book days, I’ve enjoyed superhero films much more the last few years than I did those of the 1970s and 1980s. They’re simply much more complex than their cartoonish antecedents.

Then again, that’s generally true of movies–especially action movies–period. The Daniel Craig James Bond films have been far superior to their predecessors, even those starring the iconic Sean Connery. (Heresy, I know, but the early movies, save “Thunderball,” are almost unwatchable now.) The Christian Bale Batman is far superior to the Michael Keaton–much less Adam West–version. And the recent X-Men and Iron Man films have been truly excellent standalone movies, perfectly good even to those not familiar with the comics.